Leaked reports describe Afghan war, sometimes in mundane detail

(News Today) - Journalists and other observers around the world spent Monday poring over a vast cache of documents a whistleblower website says are U.S. reports that exhaustively chronicle the twists, turns and horror of the 9-year-old war in Afghanistan.

The whistleblower website WikiLeaks.org published more than 75,000 of the reports on Sunday. The documents date from between 2004 and January 2010, and are divided into more than 100 categories. "Direct fire" accounts for the largest number -- at 16,293 reports -- while "graffiti," "mugging," "narcotics" and "threat" each account for one.

WikiLeaks has another 15,000 documents that it plans to publish after editing out names to protect people, according to the website's founder and editor-in-chief, Julian Assange.

He told CNN's "Larry King Live" that the first-hand accounts represent "the cut and thrust of the entire war over the past six years," from the military's own raw data -- numbers of casualties, threat reports and notes from meetings with Afghan leaders, among others.

"We see the who, the where, the what, the when and the how of each one of these attacks," Assange said.

Earlier, he said the reports appear to contain "evidence of war crimes" by both U.S. and Taliban forces, he said.

"This material does not leave anyone smelling like roses, especially the Taliban," he said.

The website withheld some of the documents -- such as activity by U.S. commandos and the CIA, "and most of the activity of other non-U.S. groups," Assange said. But he said the documents reveal the "squalor" of war, uncovering how a number of small incidents have added up to huge numbers of civilian deaths.

The significance lies in "all of these people being killed in the small events that we haven't heard about that numerically eclipse the big casualty events," he told CNN. "It's the boy killed by a shell that missed a target."

"What we haven't seen previously is all those individual deaths," he said. "We've seen just the number and, like Stalin said, 'One man's death is a tragedy, a million dead is a statistic.' So, we've seen the statistic."

CNN has not independently confirmed the authenticity of the documents. The reports tend to be filled with jargon, like this one that describes a border incident from September 4, 2005:

"The Pakistan LNO [liaison officer] reports that ANA [Afghan National Army] troops are massing and threatening the PAKMIL [Pakistani military] 12km NE of FB Lwara [Firebase Lwara, a U.S. military base] ..."

And that's not even the entire first sentence.

Once the jargon is pierced, the stories can be eye-opening.

In a February 5, 2008, incident, Task Force Helmand reported that an Afghan National Policeman [ANP] was in a public shower smoking hashish when two members of the Afghan National Army walked in.

"ANP felt threatened and a fire fight occurred," the report says. "The ANP fled the scene and was later shot. ANP and ANA commanders held meetings to contain the incident."

An October 15, 2007, incident describes an ANP highway police officer's shooting of another Afghan national police officer in the shoulder and leg, not seriously. "The shooting was not accidental the policeman had been arguing with each other for a few days," the report said.

In a March 19 2005 incident, "FOB [Forward Operating Base] Cobra received a local national boy who had received a gunshot wound to his stomach," another report said.

"He had been shot during a green-on-green [Afghans attacking Afghans] firefight in Jangalak Village. The boy and his older brother had heard shooting outside of their compound and went outside to check it out, at which point the boy was shot in the stomach. Another brother had also been shot and died at the compound. No adults males had accompanied the brothers, and only the older brother of the injured boy could provide information on the incident. The older brother explained that men in the village were having personal disputes with each other and had then began shooting at each ones' compounds."

The New York Times reported Sunday that military field documents on WikiLeaks suggest that Pakistan, an ally of the United States in the war against terror, has been running something of a "double game."

Pakistan has been allowing "representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders," said the newspaper, which had prior access to the documents.

"This is really the raw material of the war, unassessed, raw fragmentary data that I think in each case, you have to be very careful how much of a larger picture you can conclude from these fragments and snippets," said Bruce Riedel, an analyst at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

He said the release could hinder the U.S. intelligence-gathering effort. "With 90,000 secrets on the internet, it's going to be pretty hard to persuade possible spies that they can rely on America to keep a secret. Clearly we can't, and that's going to have a chilling effect on potential intelligence sources."

Though it is not news that Pakistan has a relationship with the Taliban, "the extent of it, the depth of it, the texture of that relationship is now laid out in copious detail," Riedel said. "We already had a very strained relationship in Pakistan over this issue, for several years. This is going to pressure that relationship even more."

The United States "strongly condemned" the documents' release, Pakistani officials dismissed the contents as lies, and the Afghan government expressed amazement.

"The Afghan government is shocked with the report that has opened the reality of the Afghan war," said Siamak Herawi, a government spokesman.

Herawi focused on the allegation that Pakistan was secretly supporting al Qaeda, and charged that Washington needed to deal with Pakistani intelligence, the ISI.

"There should be serious action taken against the ISI, who has a direct connection with the terrorists," he said. "These reports show that the U.S. was already aware of the ISI connection with the al Qaeda terrorist network.

The United States is overdue on the ISI issue and now the United States should answer."

But Gen. Hamid Gul, the former head of Pakistan's intelligence service who is cited numerous times in the reports, rejected the accusations.

"These reports are absolutely and utterly false," Gul said Monday. "I think they [the United States] are failing and they're looking for scapegoats."

Qamar Zaman Kaira, Pakistan's federal information minister, said allegations against the ISI are "baseless.

"If someone has any evidence, it should be brought to us and we will take action," he said. "The Pakistani military, especially the ISI, has sacrificed more than any other forces in the war on terrorism."

A spokesman for Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Farahnaz Ispahani, said the "unsubstantiated leaks" based on uncorroborated "one-sided reports ... will not deter the Pakistani government's commitment to the eradication of terrorism, peace with our neighbors and stability in the region."

Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, issued a statement Sunday saying the reports "do not reflect the current onground realities."

Rather, they "reflect nothing more than single-source comments and rumors, which abound on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and are often proved wrong after deeper examination," Haqqani's statement said.

National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones issued a statement Sunday calling the documents' release "irresponsible."

"The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk and threaten our national security," the statement said.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Monday that the documents' release was "a breach of federal law" and said that an investigation into the source of the leak was under way.

But, he added, "I don't think that what is being reported hasn't in many ways been publicly discussed -- whether by you or by representatives of the U.S. government -- for quite some time."

WikiLeaks editor Assange dismissed the American criticism, saying Washington was attacking the messenger in an attempt to distract from the message.

He said the documents were "legitimate," but said it was important not to take their contents at face value.

"We publish CIA reports all the time that are legitimate CIA reports. That doesn't mean the CIA is telling the truth," he said.

"Similarly, with this material, there is reporting from military units of various kinds, in Afghanistan, U.S. embassies across the world, about matters relevant to Afghanistan.... Those are legitimate reports," he said. "It doesn't mean the contents are true."

Assange declined to tell CNN where he got the documents. Jones' statement said the website made "no effort" to contact the Obama administration about them.

Assange denies that WikiLeaks has put troops in danger, and said the documents' publication will help people make informed decisions about whether to support the war.

Source : CNN

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